Two weekends in a row the cosmos have rewarded me with bus rides, frenzied rain dancing, boundaries of water lapping on land, and large purple and blue jellyfish coming up in the water like a lost balloon in the sky. And I have not written about my cupfuls of stories about them yet, feeling that my write ups will not give justice to these most spontaneous flecks in my mundane life. I will try my best now anyway, because I'm afraid that these mental pictures might fade as I age (or die before I am all wrinkled and senile, and my mouth ends up to be a broken record playing and replaying the scenes).
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Catmon
For the life of me, I could not comprehend how large my trust weighs on these four people in my life. Maybe this is how far our friendship has come, gambling with chances to go save a friend who needs a breath of Oceania and temporary freedom, and trusting another's surreal memory for a destination. 3pm (and in an after-work state) is not a very ideal time of day to leave for a random excursion to some jerkwater place two hours away from urban life; but I zoom out of the office anyway to pack a hodgepodge of things randomly into my backpack and leave to rendezvous in Coco Mall with two of these friends I have spoken about (friends who I like to call my "cheshire cats"; I have this wild imagination that this past year, I have been roaming around lost in a Wonderland of nightmares, mad parties, mysterious Caterpillars waxing poetic about the soul and dear, old precious life too short to waste, and how it isn't composed of years but a series of "now, now and now!"). So I arrive with my backpack, a little ruffed up and ragged from the mad rush to get there, and ask where we're headed. "Catmon," Russ says, and I ask why. "Because I've been going there in my dreams for days now, man, so let's go!" says Liyo. And have you been there in waking life, I ask, and he says no. So we launch ourselves anyway on our wind to go fetch their boy-friends, bringing with us a pair of angel wings, a cage and a bouquet of white stems and flowers, because it's really like that; you bring with you what makes you laugh. At 7pm we hustle with the people in the North Bus Terminal for seats, and watch the movie on our windows. For two hours, places that we pass make memories pop at random like the water bomb plants we played with when we were kids (and never before has memory been this noisy on a bus ride). And two hours later, Liyo screams, "this is it! My dream! Get off, we're here!" and for a few moments after that, the last thing I hear is the fading sound of the bus engine, and nothing afterwards but the highway, pitch black, and us, moonlit in Liyo's dream.
*
The lampost burns a gloom in the sky through the clouds, and eventually we see light play on the surface of a restive sea. Suffice it to say we just celebrate the moon (for it was almost the end of her month) with dancing for her, and dancing in headphones, and singing (as if it would pacify the water) and bread and wine and beef jerky; and we take pictures of us wearing the wings; little winged lost creatures having found a piece of heaven, ready to fly again to where, nobody really knows.
